Should I switch?

Question

I'm presently a happy Debian user looking for a better experience, and I'm wondering if Archlinux might be the answer.  I've heard lots of great stuff about it.
I love that Debian has all the packages I want and a huge, active community.  Apt is great and generally everything just works.  However, using Sid (I like updated packages), there is a lot of breakage, and even some of Sid's packages simply don't get updated as often as they should.  The community also has quite a bit of Debianism--that is, everything must be done the "Debian way."  Again, I'm still happy with Debian, and none of these are show-stoppers.
But I would like to not have to worry so much about broken packages all the time.  Just updating GNOME from 2.18.3-1 to 2.18.3-2 breaks the network-manager package--that's ridiculous!  I'd also like more updated packages, such as development versions of GNOME (2.19) and maybe some KDE 4 beta builds.  I don't want to have to compile my own kernel with the nvidia module every time there's an update--I just want to be able to install the nvidia/nvidia-glx package and be on my way.
Is Archlinux a good alternative for me?
Last edited by CocoAUS (2007-09-07 19:42:25)

Answer 1

Well I was a Ubuntu user of 3 years. I look after 5 machines in my family and 1 at my shop. 4 of these are now Arch. I find it a much snappier/responsive distro and I like the structure of the init system - rc.conf and the package system pacman.
Read the install guide and the wiki they are necessary to change but very good.
I moved a system from ubuntu to arch this w/e. Preserved the 270GB /home and reinstalled everything else (yet to do the s/w raid). THis includes, printing, scanning, apache, dovecot, gnome, etc.
To simplify I'm building my own scripts of packages. Not foolproof yet, but they reduce some of the tedium of installing packages.
Here's what I've got so far;
#!/bin/sh
# Russell's Arch-Pacman default package list
# Date: Sat 08 Sep 2007
## Base utils and gui
pacman -S xorg-server gnome gnome-extra gnome-themes gnome-themes-extras gnome-icon-theme xorg-fonts-100dpi ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera gnome-system-tools nautilus-open-terminal mc gparted xinetd hdparm alacarte ntfs-3g gnome-commander gtk-theme-switch2 gtk-smooth-engine gtk2-themes-collection sudo gksu openssh ttf-ms-fonts freetype2 xorg-fonts-type1 control-center gnome-screensaver samba
## Productivity suites, email, web browsing.
pacman -S openoffice-base gnumeric abiword wine acroread jre gnome-cups-manager cups-pdf flashplugin mozilla-thunderbird mozilla-firefox gnome-cups-manager cups-pdf cups flashplugin
## Multimedia capability - DVDs and movies base codecs
pacman -S codecs totem-xine gxine mplayer mplayer-plugin alsa-lib alsa-utils totem-plugin lame cdrdao libdvdcss libdvdnav libdvdread
## Multimedia capability - additional codecs
pacman -S gstreamer0.10-alsa gstreamer0.10-alsaspdif gthumb gstreamer0.10-lame gstreamer0.10-taglib gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-gconf gstreamer0.10-libpng gstreamer0.10-jpeg gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gstreamer0.10-hal gstreamer0.10-mpeg2dec gstreamer0.10-dvdread gstreamer0.10-a52dec gstreamer0.10-mad
## Server and machine specific utils
# pacman -S apache php
# pacman -S madwifi madwifi-utils wifi-radar
# pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies
## Printing
pacman -S hplip hpoj foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-hpijs foomatic-db-ppd foomatic-filters gutenprint
## Scanning
pacman -S pyqt sane sane-frontends xsane
## Repositories
#Server = ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/archlinux/current/os/i686
#Server = ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/archlinux/testing/os/i686
#Server = ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/archlinux/extra/os/i686
#Server = ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/archlinux/community/os/i686
#Server = ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/archlinux/unstable/os/i686
## Default groups.
# use script - newuser
#disk::6:root,ruscook
#disk::6:root,ruscook
#lp::7:daemon
#wheel::10:root,ruscook
#log::19:root,ruscook
#video:x:91:ruscook,joy,jazmin,harry
#audio::92:ruscook,joy,jazmin,harry
#optical::93:hal,ruscook,joy,jazmin,harry
#storage:x:95:hal,ruscook,joy,jazmin,harry
#users::100:ruscook
#camera:x:97:ruscook
#scanner:x:96:ruscook,joy,jazmin
#gpasswd -a ruscook disk,wheel,log,video,audio,optical,storage,scanner
And here's my script to create a new user:
#!/bin/sh
# Russell's default User/Group script
# Date: Sat 08 Sep 2007
for i in ruscook; do
echo creating user: $i
adduser $i
for g in wheel log users disk video audio optical storage scanner lp camera; do
gpasswd -a $i $g
done
done
for i in joy jazmin harry; do
echo creating user: $i
adduser $i
for g in disk video audio optical storage scanner lp camera; do
gpasswd -a $i $g
done
done
The above will help me make a "std" install on each of the machines I look after.
I also edit sudoers, to allow "wheel" users access to sudo.
Take the plunge, there's a steeper learning curve than Ubuntu but the reward is a more responsive system, without waiting for gentoo's compile times :-)
Russ
Last edited by ruscook (2007-09-08 06:25:09)